Author Archives: Catriona Shedd

“Businesses have now come to recognize that providing a quality user experience is an essential, sustainable competitive advantage. It is user experience that forms the customer’s impression of the company’s offerings, it is user experience that differentiates the company from its competitors, and it is user experience that determines whether your customer will ever come back.” – The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett

“What exactly does it mean to be a compassionate designer? It means doing things that help us not only understand, but relate to the users we design for. To feel for them. To put ourselves in their shoes, even if our own lives are totally opposite from them. Sound simple? It is. You just have to do it.” – David Armano

“The designer… has a passion for doing something that fits somebody’s needs, but that is not just a simple fix. The designer has a dream that goes beyond what exists, rather than fixing what exists… the designer wants to create a solution that fits in a deeper situational or social sense.” – David Kelley, Founder of IDEO, in Bringing Design to Software by Terry Winograd

Purchase Bringing Design to Softwarehere or check out an interview with David Kelley for some interesting insights on design.

“Creation is nothing but the reconstitution of existing parts. The components are the same, the combination is new. Become aware of as much of the world as possible. This will form your palette of components. It is up to you to put them in their place.” – Mike Padilla

Mike, a User Experience Design Manager at Vanguard, has some great articles up on Digital Web Magazine. You can also view his personal website here.

“The purpose of user experience design, or UXD, is to understand that user behavior can be seen as part of a holistic experiential model instead of as a shallow, temporary hit-and-run encounter. In the domain of user experience, then, we must not mistake trying something for experiencing it.” -Christopher Fahey

Read Christopher’s article “Experience or Don’t Experience. There is no Try.” here

“Good information architecture makes users less alienated and suppressed by technology. It simultaneously increases human satisfaction and your company’s profits. Very few jobs allow you to do both at the same time, so enjoy.” – Jakob Nielsen in Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Louis Rosenfeld & Peter Morville